2. You should not have been modded troll. (Initiating a discussion with a bias is not always a troll.)
3. Movies, reading fictional books, and watching non instructive television are also complete wastes of time. So is going to the theatre.
I stopped apologizing for enjoying World of Warcraft when I gave up my Sunday of play to go visit my extended family. We didn't visit, everyone - but me - sat around watching and discussing football, and sleeping. And how this was totally ok. Not like those computer games, which waste everyone's time. I realized that I hate football because that Sunday was exactly how I grew up.
Talk about a fucking waste of time, I didn't even learn anything about them or myself. With WoW, and role-playing games in general, I have, and continue, to learn about myself and those with whom I associate.
The biggest example of learning about myself was when I was playing a Gnome and a Night-elf said I was cute. Never a good flirt in real life, I thanked her and TURNED MY CHARACTER AROUND TOTALLY EMBARRASSED. What the hell was that? I have thought a lot about that incidence. My wife thought it was totally funny and we had both a good chuckle and active, interesting discussion.
Every experience can provide insight and be thought provoking. Anything taken to an extreme can be damaging.
You may not be able to understand what they are doing for 16 hours (by the way that sounds like a LONG time to me as well), but they might be developing in many ways. They might not, welcome to a lesser nanny-state society - wish I could say free.
Still beats the hell outta 16 hours of watching football. (And no, you never said anything about football, it is just an example that is salient to my life.)
If seeing polyboobies is REALLY a significant problem for our children...
Polyboobies were never really the issue. It has always been about political opportunism and legal extortion (otherwise know as frivolous lawsuits). Look at anyone who stands to benefit from this lawsuit and one sees this is the case.
There are reasons to be distressed about this issue, but the issue of concern is a justice system that is driven by, or at least manipulated by, ambition and avarice. The issues surrounding this game are only excuses.
I am not really disagreeing with you, I just think the problem is much deeper than simple sexual provincialism. Regrettably, I don't have a solution.
Hey asshat (god I like that expression), name one. It would be nice to know so we could boot "the bastard" out of office.
In fact, other than your desire to express your hatred of... "the right-wing" - (with the ominous, da da da dum), it is the entire Alaskan congregation that is to blame. State and Federal, Republican and Democrat, all bend over for oil - or have you forgotten that Tony never collected the taxes from the Oil companies that were owed under his administration?
The BP exec specifically said that NO laws required them to conduct a pig check of the pipeline, so they didn't. No specific corruption, just general malfeasance.
Though simple, my first run through of Diablo was horrifying. I played at night, with no lights, and with the music and sound volumes fairly high. After a while, I was actually looking over my shoulder while playing the game. It was great but I almost didn't finish the game.
Moofie: Who the hell is Karl Rove? And what I mean by this is what is his history?
To every republican or conservative I know he is just like, you know, this guy. To democrats and liberals, he is Satan incarnate (well, if they believed in Satan that is), who is a masterful tactician and master manipulator. Every time they mention him it is with fear and loathing.
If he is that good, and the dems want to take over the country, maybe they should offer him more money and power than he has now.
I must have been thinking about Gerry Studds and the 17-year-old male page. Barney is the one whose lover ran the underage call-boy service out of Barney's house.
Pedophilia? What, do you think Foley's victim was eight, 10 or 14?
The fact that the pubs didn't remove this guy because he was one of their own is no surprise. That is what partisans do. But that does not negate the fact that this "sudden" insight by the crats that this type of behavior is "immoral and horrific" is political opportunism plain and simple.
And that was my point. No one should be modded troll for pointing this out.
To the contrary. Bill Clinton did miss several opportunities and was "weak" on terrorism in the same way that Bush 1, Regan, and, need it even be said, Carter were.
Terrorism wasn't real for the US until the Towers came down, plain and simple.
I don't like Clinton (and hate to give his supporters any rational defense) but the fact of the matter is that had he killed Osama, we can expect that we would have had the usual reaction of the fanatical faction of the Muslims. So although it may have prevented the Towers, that or any similar action by the terrorists would have been laid squarely at his feet ad nauseum. Furthermore, such a strike might have lost him the "lets give peace a chance" crowd who don't want to believe there is any threat even after the Towers.
Ultimately, there was no political will on either side of the aisle to remove the terrorist threat. (I am not sure there really is now, but I digress...) At risk of sounding like a New Ager, the collective consciousness of the Islamic threat (calm down I only mean those who would do the West harm, not every Muslim) just wasn't there. It would have been political suicide for him to have removed the Osama threat, so he didn't.
Oh. By the way. I trust the National Enquirer over Drudge. I will need some pretty good evidence that Foley was "set up" before I buy off on that one. Set-up, of course, meaning by another person. Foley set himself up a long time ago.
So you are saying that a document that was presented as a smoking gun to prove what the democrats wanted to be true definitely was true - even though the document was fraudulent - because we already knew the information that the fraudulent document proved true was true. Even though we had no proof.
Whatever.
The fact is that Dan Rather stepped on his dick by presenting a fraudulent document as true and NOBODY gets away with that shit anymore, left or right. If somebody makes a claim that is false, somebody else is going to call them on it. Neither side can make unsubstantiated claims with impunity.
It found that angry children who were encouraged to release their aggressions by hitting a Bobo-the-clown blow-up doll - popular in the 70's and NOT the usual type of blow-up doll that is discussed here on/. - displayed more acts of violence than before the encouragement occurred. It was postulated that engaging in aggressive actions when angry teaches one to engage in aggressive actions when angry.
I say 'may contradict' because, while the study discounts that engaging in substitute violent behavior is an effective relief mechanism - so I believe you are wrong in that point, the concomitants of the study focused on the 'relief of aggression' through the 'safe release' of physical aggression. (IE. it is ok to beat up a doll. Much to the relief of some of our less intrepid/.'ers I am sure.)
Video games do not encourage physical aggression. (Or, at least, not when you have to pay for your own components.) While they may or may not encourage psychological aggression, what they do encourage or "teach" is that when you are angry you should sit down and abandon reality.
You know... That final conclusion is not where I intended to go and actually sounds worse to me than the argument that video game do cause violence.
This type of situation always works on a carrot and stick approach. Individuals with RFID passports will breeze through Customs and Border Protection (CBP) while everyone else waits in line. As increasing numbers of people have RFID passports, more resources will be dedicated to them. Unless authorization is granted to increase staffing levels, processing officers will be increasingly assigned to the RFID passport reading stations. This means the wait times will begin to get very long for non-RFID passport clearances.
At some point, due to new passport acquisition and general inconvenience, almost everyone will have RFID passports. At that point, individuals will either be mandated to get new passports or be so frustrated by the bureaucracy that will surround processing a non-standard passport:
("Hey, why doesn't this thing work? You don't have an RFID? Why not?"
aside - "Ya, think he is a terrorist, Bob? He doesn't fit the current profile"
"Naw... but we have to double check it 'cuz of HQ mandates, pull him aside.")
that they will simply stop traveling or buckle under and get "with the program".
...doesn't sound like a way to reduce spam - it sounds like runaway stupidity.
I don't think they are trying to block spam, I think they are trying to increase their bandwidth by reducing traffic. And, the traffic they are reducing is LIKELY spam but they don't know/care. If someone complains, such as alum.mit, they will unblock.
The spam spin is for PR purposes.
I do not have any evidence for this but I still think it the most likely scenario.
Even though their spreadsheet lists Alabama, not Alaska, I will assume that is a typo. Their calculations include federal income taxes and federal expenditures. They do not include Federal taxes on natural resources, such as oil, nor do they account for the fact that well over half the people here are employed by the Federal Government, mostly DOD. Once you start including taxes on resources, the numbers begin changing rapidly.
So, the Federal dollars spent have become a rather big issue nationally. Oddly enough, it becomes most shrill when awareness of other pork barrel projects arise, such as the Big Dig for example in Boston. So be it. It would seem that Congress critters like to point to others when their hands are caught in the cookie jar - or freezer as the case may be.
Another consideration is that many Alaskans (Natives in particular) live in absolute poverty with no or little infrastructure (no running water, etc). So, quite a bit of Federal money is required to be spent to upgrade that infrastructure. Now, if you are libertarian or otherwise small government, your response may be "tough shit" they should move to a more populous area for more efficient utilization of infrastructure dollars. Many people here would agree. If you are leftist, and believe in the forced redistribution of wealth, then you can be happy that your tax dollars are at work to fulfill your dream.
At any rate, my post isn't to change anybody's mind but merely to point out that there are more factors than those usually considered. But then, that is usually the case with everything.
By the way, just so you know how Congress works, after the big stink about the money earmarked for the "bridge to nowhere", which isn't true but that is a discussion for another time, Congress removed the earmark. Alaska STILL GOT THE MONEY but WITHOUT the strings attached. And BOTH sides considered it a victory.
Blink blink... blink blink... Yeah, that's what I though too.
I completely agree. In addition, I have to add that, for me, NWN has provided the single greatest return on my entertainment dollar, bar none. My whole family played it for years and my kids still do. In fact, I still like to re-enter the world on occasion. The enthusiasm and involvement of the community was just unbelievable to me. And, no slam to WoW, which I currently play, the non-technical experience felt a bit more mature. Many of the modules really did take me back to pencil and paper gaming experience.
I also liked the fact that some modules provided, ahem, more adult content and themes. That really brought back the old D&D experience. I was one of the fortunate few who actually found real live girls that like to play D&D. Yep, lots of virtual sex and mayhem.
(On a side note, I have always been bit bemused that some of NWN's community modules never seemed to come up in the whole "save the children" hysteria concerning gaming. Hopefully I didn't just fuck that up.)
This is why, whether you agree with them or not, SCOTUS decisions based upon considerations of international law and social perspective rather than based only upon the Constitution set a very dangerous precedent.
The above, of course, being a very US-centric point of view: but true none-the-less.
Yeah. I was pretty bummed when it occurred to me during my under graduate years that all of my "research" essentially amounted to consolidating and regurgitating other peoples research. (And, in some cases, THEIR consolidation and regurgitation.)
I never really proved anything.
------------
Clever trolls are master baiters of the worst kind.
Slashdot Mirror
1. You are 100% right, it is a waste of time.
2. You should not have been modded troll. (Initiating a discussion with a bias is not always a troll.)
3. Movies, reading fictional books, and watching non instructive television are also complete wastes of time. So is going to the theatre.
I stopped apologizing for enjoying World of Warcraft when I gave up my Sunday of play to go visit my extended family. We didn't visit, everyone - but me - sat around watching and discussing football, and sleeping. And how this was totally ok. Not like those computer games, which waste everyone's time. I realized that I hate football because that Sunday was exactly how I grew up.
Talk about a fucking waste of time, I didn't even learn anything about them or myself. With WoW, and role-playing games in general, I have, and continue, to learn about myself and those with whom I associate.
The biggest example of learning about myself was when I was playing a Gnome and a Night-elf said I was cute. Never a good flirt in real life, I thanked her and TURNED MY CHARACTER AROUND TOTALLY EMBARRASSED. What the hell was that? I have thought a lot about that incidence. My wife thought it was totally funny and we had both a good chuckle and active, interesting discussion.
Every experience can provide insight and be thought provoking. Anything taken to an extreme can be damaging.
You may not be able to understand what they are doing for 16 hours (by the way that sounds like a LONG time to me as well), but they might be developing in many ways. They might not, welcome to a lesser nanny-state society - wish I could say free.
Still beats the hell outta 16 hours of watching football. (And no, you never said anything about football, it is just an example that is salient to my life.)
If seeing polyboobies is REALLY a significant problem for our children...
Polyboobies were never really the issue. It has always been about political opportunism and legal extortion (otherwise know as frivolous lawsuits). Look at anyone who stands to benefit from this lawsuit and one sees this is the case.
There are reasons to be distressed about this issue, but the issue of concern is a justice system that is driven by, or at least manipulated by, ambition and avarice. The issues surrounding this game are only excuses.
I am not really disagreeing with you, I just think the problem is much deeper than simple sexual provincialism. Regrettably, I don't have a solution.
In fact, other than your desire to express your hatred of... "the right-wing" - (with the ominous, da da da dum), it is the entire Alaskan congregation that is to blame. State and Federal, Republican and Democrat, all bend over for oil - or have you forgotten that Tony never collected the taxes from the Oil companies that were owed under his administration?
The BP exec specifically said that NO laws required them to conduct a pig check of the pipeline, so they didn't. No specific corruption, just general malfeasance.
Nice try on the partisan dig, though.
How can you be afraid of a moment in a videogame?
By getting into the moment.
Though simple, my first run through of Diablo was horrifying. I played at night, with no lights, and with the music and sound volumes fairly high. After a while, I was actually looking over my shoulder while playing the game. It was great but I almost didn't finish the game.
UP YOURS...
Best commercial ever...
I hate 7UP but enjoyed this commercial so much, I learned how to drink it to support them...
With vodka and orange juice was the best solution ;o)
Unless they have Karl Rove working for them.
Moofie: Who the hell is Karl Rove? And what I mean by this is what is his history?
To every republican or conservative I know he is just like, you know, this guy. To democrats and liberals, he is Satan incarnate (well, if they believed in Satan that is), who is a masterful tactician and master manipulator. Every time they mention him it is with fear and loathing.
If he is that good, and the dems want to take over the country, maybe they should offer him more money and power than he has now.
Yeah sorry.
I must have been thinking about Gerry Studds and the 17-year-old male page. Barney is the one whose lover ran the underage call-boy service out of Barney's house.
Pedophilia? What, do you think Foley's victim was eight, 10 or 14?
The fact that the pubs didn't remove this guy because he was one of their own is no surprise. That is what partisans do. But that does not negate the fact that this "sudden" insight by the crats that this type of behavior is "immoral and horrific" is political opportunism plain and simple.
And that was my point. No one should be modded troll for pointing this out.
To the contrary. Bill Clinton did miss several opportunities and was "weak" on terrorism in the same way that Bush 1, Regan, and, need it even be said, Carter were.
Terrorism wasn't real for the US until the Towers came down, plain and simple.
I don't like Clinton (and hate to give his supporters any rational defense) but the fact of the matter is that had he killed Osama, we can expect that we would have had the usual reaction of the fanatical faction of the Muslims. So although it may have prevented the Towers, that or any similar action by the terrorists would have been laid squarely at his feet ad nauseum. Furthermore, such a strike might have lost him the "lets give peace a chance" crowd who don't want to believe there is any threat even after the Towers.
Ultimately, there was no political will on either side of the aisle to remove the terrorist threat. (I am not sure there really is now, but I digress...) At risk of sounding like a New Ager, the collective consciousness of the Islamic threat (calm down I only mean those who would do the West harm, not every Muslim) just wasn't there. It would have been political suicide for him to have removed the Osama threat, so he didn't.
God, I feel sullied.
Doh. I fucked up with a misspelling of jolly.
Oh. By the way. I trust the National Enquirer over Drudge. I will need some pretty good evidence that Foley was "set up" before I buy off on that one. Set-up, of course, meaning by another person. Foley set himself up a long time ago.
Cough... Barney Frank... Cough
It is just jolley politics in the good 'ol USA.
So you are saying that a document that was presented as a smoking gun to prove what the democrats wanted to be true definitely was true - even though the document was fraudulent - because we already knew the information that the fraudulent document proved true was true. Even though we had no proof.
Whatever.
The fact is that Dan Rather stepped on his dick by presenting a fraudulent document as true and NOBODY gets away with that shit anymore, left or right. If somebody makes a claim that is false, somebody else is going to call them on it. Neither side can make unsubstantiated claims with impunity.
No. That is a pretty close quote. And, it is right in line with my belief that the estimated claim of 50% is a tad low.
It found that angry children who were encouraged to release their aggressions by hitting a Bobo-the-clown blow-up doll - popular in the 70's and NOT the usual type of blow-up doll that is discussed here on /. - displayed more acts of violence than before the encouragement occurred. It was postulated that engaging in aggressive actions when angry teaches one to engage in aggressive actions when angry.
I say 'may contradict' because, while the study discounts that engaging in substitute violent behavior is an effective relief mechanism - so I believe you are wrong in that point, the concomitants of the study focused on the 'relief of aggression' through the 'safe release' of physical aggression. (IE. it is ok to beat up a doll. Much to the relief of some of our less intrepid /.'ers I am sure.)
Video games do not encourage physical aggression. (Or, at least, not when you have to pay for your own components.) While they may or may not encourage psychological aggression, what they do encourage or "teach" is that when you are angry you should sit down and abandon reality.
You know... That final conclusion is not where I intended to go and actually sounds worse to me than the argument that video game do cause violence.
Well, hmmm. Now you know about the Bobo study.
This type of situation always works on a carrot and stick approach. Individuals with RFID passports will breeze through Customs and Border Protection (CBP) while everyone else waits in line. As increasing numbers of people have RFID passports, more resources will be dedicated to them. Unless authorization is granted to increase staffing levels, processing officers will be increasingly assigned to the RFID passport reading stations. This means the wait times will begin to get very long for non-RFID passport clearances.
At some point, due to new passport acquisition and general inconvenience, almost everyone will have RFID passports. At that point, individuals will either be mandated to get new passports or be so frustrated by the bureaucracy that will surround processing a non-standard passport:
("Hey, why doesn't this thing work? You don't have an RFID? Why not?"
aside - "Ya, think he is a terrorist, Bob? He doesn't fit the current profile"
"Naw... but we have to double check it 'cuz of HQ mandates, pull him aside.")
that they will simply stop traveling or buckle under and get "with the program".
I think he threatened a veto once,
(cue Danny Vermin from Johnny Dangerously),
ONCE.
I don't think they are trying to block spam, I think they are trying to increase their bandwidth by reducing traffic. And, the traffic they are reducing is LIKELY spam but they don't know/care. If someone complains, such as alum.mit, they will unblock.
The spam spin is for PR purposes.
I do not have any evidence for this but I still think it the most likely scenario.
My Very Exotic Mistress Just Showed Up Nude.
Now that's news.
Well, that is pretty good rhetoric but I would like to point out a couple of things.
You probably got your information from some place like http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/11.htm l .
Even though their spreadsheet lists Alabama, not Alaska, I will assume that is a typo. Their calculations include federal income taxes and federal expenditures. They do not include Federal taxes on natural resources, such as oil, nor do they account for the fact that well over half the people here are employed by the Federal Government, mostly DOD. Once you start including taxes on resources, the numbers begin changing rapidly.
So, the Federal dollars spent have become a rather big issue nationally. Oddly enough, it becomes most shrill when awareness of other pork barrel projects arise, such as the Big Dig for example in Boston. So be it. It would seem that Congress critters like to point to others when their hands are caught in the cookie jar - or freezer as the case may be.
Another consideration is that many Alaskans (Natives in particular) live in absolute poverty with no or little infrastructure (no running water, etc). So, quite a bit of Federal money is required to be spent to upgrade that infrastructure. Now, if you are libertarian or otherwise small government, your response may be "tough shit" they should move to a more populous area for more efficient utilization of infrastructure dollars. Many people here would agree. If you are leftist, and believe in the forced redistribution of wealth, then you can be happy that your tax dollars are at work to fulfill your dream.
At any rate, my post isn't to change anybody's mind but merely to point out that there are more factors than those usually considered. But then, that is usually the case with everything.
By the way, just so you know how Congress works, after the big stink about the money earmarked for the "bridge to nowhere", which isn't true but that is a discussion for another time, Congress removed the earmark. Alaska STILL GOT THE MONEY but WITHOUT the strings attached. And BOTH sides considered it a victory.
Blink blink... blink blink... Yeah, that's what I though too.
Ditch ma CB antenna and Yosemite Sam mudflap? You mus' be a ga-damn communist.
http://www.bose.com/controller?event=VIEW_STATIC_P AGE_EVENT&url=/home_entertainment/stereo/index.jsp
If you can afford them.
Thatth the latht time I read a potht from thomeone with a thpeach impediment.
I completely agree. In addition, I have to add that, for me, NWN has provided the single greatest return on my entertainment dollar, bar none. My whole family played it for years and my kids still do. In fact, I still like to re-enter the world on occasion. The enthusiasm and involvement of the community was just unbelievable to me. And, no slam to WoW, which I currently play, the non-technical experience felt a bit more mature. Many of the modules really did take me back to pencil and paper gaming experience.
I also liked the fact that some modules provided, ahem, more adult content and themes. That really brought back the old D&D experience. I was one of the fortunate few who actually found real live girls that like to play D&D. Yep, lots of virtual sex and mayhem.
(On a side note, I have always been bit bemused that some of NWN's community modules never seemed to come up in the whole "save the children" hysteria concerning gaming. Hopefully I didn't just fuck that up.)
This was the first thing I thought of. Ah, cynicism cynicism...
This is why, whether you agree with them or not, SCOTUS decisions based upon considerations of international law and social perspective rather than based only upon the Constitution set a very dangerous precedent.
The above, of course, being a very US-centric point of view: but true none-the-less.
Yeah. I was pretty bummed when it occurred to me during my under graduate years that all of my "research" essentially amounted to consolidating and regurgitating other peoples research. (And, in some cases, THEIR consolidation and regurgitation.)
I never really proved anything.
------------
Clever trolls are master baiters of the worst kind.